The way we address this where I work is via the accessibility policy on our
site. We use this language:
# 10.4 User testing indicated that our entire audience possesses user agents
capable of navigating text input fields without having placeholder text in
them. Thus, we deemed that the “until user agents” section of this
checkpoint was fulfilled. Note: some accessibility testing programs may give
an error on this checkpoint when checking our website. Again, we believe
that we have indeed fulfilled this guideline, and that including placeholder
text would have been counterproductive for accessibility. This guideline is
archaic and is set to be deprecated in WCAG 2.0.
Colin Lieberman
IT Manager
Disability Rights Advocates
2001 Center Street, Third Floor
Berkeley, CaliforniaÂ 94704-1204
510 665 8644 x.134 (Tel)
510 665 8716 (TTY)
510 665 8511 (Fax)
-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Laboo
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 10:04 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Use of pre-compilated text-fields in forms
Hallo
the automatic validation http://webxact.watchfire.com/ (I think is the
strongest ) requires visible text in textfields;
naturally is a big sacrifice for graphic appeal of a site.
Is there any valid alternative to pass this hard accessibility validation??
thanks
Laboo
Roberto Federico
info@laboo.it - www.laboo.it - www.laboo.biz/pa/ - www.laboo.biz/infogatto/